23 Responses to President Obama Has Some Splain’ to Do

I agree. Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL will come back to bite him in the ass. In Denver, local news reports on the historically high gas prices consistently show drivers furious and they blame Obama for fanning the flames of war with Iran and rejecting Keystone XL. The Canadians have signed agreements to sell the tar sands oil to China. It’s outrageous.

He didn’t.He stated that we need to investigate it more.If you lived in area where the pipeline would run through and threaten your ground water you would understand the need for care,especially if you checked the companies record on leaks and spills.In any case,had it been approved,the oil would not be flowing for years to come.Also,if Canada decides to build there own pipeline with no US dollars and send it to their own coast,it lands on the world market anyway.Then there is the fact of capacity of the refineries.Oil from our own western shale oil fields often backs up in terminals waiting for refineries.

I planned to drive to Northern Virginia to see my daughter, son-in-law and grandchild for Easter. I can’t afford to make the drive on my fixed income. The distance from Connecticut to Virginia will be too costly for me. I can’t believe how expensive the price of gas is now. Maybe I will take Amtrak and hope it doesn’t crash.

Thanks to the tar sands oil, Alberta can’t recruit workers fast enough. Construction workers, welders, electricians, plumbers, teachers, nurses and doctors. Many from the USA. Alberta has the highest income of all Canadian provinces and the lowest taxes.

Meanwhile, the proposed 1,600 mile oil pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia is a done deal, as dozens of Native American Indian tribes have signed onto a portion of the profits. Profits that will come as a result of sales of oil to China which is poised to become the largest consumer of gas in the world.

from the article: “President Obama needs to tell the American people why he rejected cheap, reliable oil from our neighbor to the north, Canada.”

Are you referring to the tar-sand pipeline from Alberta? It’s my understanding that the tar-sand oil can (and probably will) be shipped into the United States via railroad. Because diesel engines on trains these days are very fuel-efficient, it costs only an extra $4 per barrel to ship the tar-sand oil from Alberta into the United States by railroad, instead of a pipeline. And the person who stands to benefit the most from this arrangement — cough, cough –is none other than Warren Buffett, who is one of Obama’s biggest supporters! You see, Warren Buffett is the owner and the chairman of the board of the Northern Burlington railway — its rail lines are well-situated to ship tar-sand oil between Alberta and the United States. I read about this in a business article — possibly Bloomberg News or the Wall Street Journal.

I would like to make one other comment on this issue: The big oil companies and commodity traders are quite capable of manipulating the price of oil for political reasons. The political contributions of big oil companies have heavily favored Republicans in the past, and I believe the commodity traders have a similar bias.

ultra – How could the oil from the Alberta province tar sands be shipped into the USA without an agreement? The Canadian government of Stephen Harper now calls the Chinese a “strategic partner” responsible for pumping more than $16 billion into Canadian energy in the past two years and hope to gain steady supplies of oil from the investment. Harper told USA Today recently he no longer sees the USA as a reliable energy partner and why would he after Obama told Canada the USA isn’t interested in Keystone.

So President Obama won’t buy Keystone oil from Canada but he’s perfectly OK with the U.S. continuing to buy oil from Saudi Arabia? How George W. Bush or Mr. Obama. Saudi Arabia began erecting a number of large global charities in the 1960s and 1970s whose original purpose was to spread Wahhabi Islam which became penetrated by prominent individuals from al-Qaeda’s global jihad network. The three most prominent of these charities were the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO; an offshoot of the Muslim World League), the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the Charitable Foundations of al-Haramain. All three are suspected by various global intelligence organizations of terrorist funding. The more things change in the White House, the more things remain the same.

To blame the President because the American Petroleum Institute is running the price of gas up is as idiotic as signing a bill to run a pipeline across the Unites States and the American people will not get the number of jobs that were promised OR the oil from the sands. The oil goes to the highest bidder NOT the American people.

According to this, Crude Oil and Total Petroleum Imports Top 15 Countries, as of November 2010, the top source of oil US drivers buy is from Canada.

Followed by Mexico at no. 2.

In all, the United States got over 75% of its crude oil from non Arab states in November of 2010.

However, with crude topping $106 a barrel yesterday and gas prices at the pump climbing .10 cents in two hours, this still means the US dumps $400 billion into anti-American, Arab coffers each year.

On the issue of President Obama rejecting the Canadian tar sands oil, this is a huge mistake and one he will have to defend in November. Gas prices at $5+ in summer and fall will be an albatross around his reelection campaign.

Was this posting snark? The keystone pipeline, which would not be finished for years, even if approved tomorrow, is intended to transport highly toxic sludge to refineries on the gulf, to be refined and sold overseas. It would have zero effect on gas prices today or in the future. We currently have more domestic oil and gasoline supplies than ever before, and US citizens are using less gasoline than in the past, yet prices are going up? Forgive me if I am right, but the current high gas prices most probably represent price-fixing by the oil companies in a deliberate attempt to prevent Obama’s reelection. Buying into the phony Keystone pipeline excuse is only giving them cover. You are being lied to, folks!

Debbie B: “The radical environmentalists won’t be happy until every adult in America is paying $15 a gallon. We should grind them up and use them as a bio fuel. So clean and non-polluting.”

The sooner we stop using fossil fuels the better off we will be in the long run — because once those fossil fuels are gone — they are gone for good. There is no real future for any civilization that is dependent on fossil fuels. It’s an evolutionary dead-end. You are proposing to stone the prophets of truth because you dislike their message and don’t want to be confronted with reality.

The cost of producing a gallon of gasoline is costing the oil companies more and more money. They have to charge more money in order to recover their costs. Making gasoline out of dirty Alberta tar-sand and drilling for oil in deep water off the Gulf coast is very expensive. The oil deposits that are cheap and easy to extract have largely disappeared in the United States, and the same thing will eventually happen abroad.

Ultra, it is laudable to one day be weaned off fossil fuels. I hope that day happens in my lifetime.

But the reality is, until we develop practical, efficient electric or solar cars, fossil fuel will power the world’s airplanes, ships, trucks and yes, cars. As for your comment that Alberta’s tar sand oil is dirty, all petroleum is dirty. Not just what comes from Canada.

I much prefer buying oil from an America friendly nation like Canada that treats its LGBT population with dignity and respect than an Islamic country in the Middle East that routinely kills their LGBT population.

Electric cars aren’t practical at this point. The closest you can get to electric is a hybrid car like a Toyota Prius but the Prius still uses gasoline. The Chevy Volt is a troubled design with flaws. It costs a staggering $40,000 and can’t be driven long distances without recharging. The scariest thing about the Volt is its propensity to catch fire.

Debbie: Some sources of oil are more dirty and polluting than others — extracting oil from the tar-sands of Alberta is one of the most polluting and least efficient ways to do it. This project is only profitable if oil prices remain high — it will not produce cheap gasoline. You better get used to high gasoline prices, because today’s prices are going to seem cheap compared to what they’re going to be in the future.

DMason: I don’t think you need an international agreement to ship oil by railroad from Canada into the United States. These rail lines already exist, and some of them are probably already being used to ship oil into the United States. China hasn’t been given monopoly control over the Alberta tar-sands oil. The plan to build a pipeline across British Columbia to the Pacific coast will likely be challenged in the Canadian courts on environmental grounds — such lawsuits could drag on for years.

Inflation here in the the UK is close to 4%. Every economist links this to our high energy costs. Your own Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman said $6 a gallon petrol will cause recession. But $8 a gallon petrol will cause a depression. Why doesn’t your Fed nationalize your energy companies? Hugo Chavez did this in Venezuela and gas prices dropped to .14 cents a gallon. Sometimes the USA isn’t as smart as they want the world to think they are.

The Enbridge Gateway Pipeline (Alberta to B.C.) is a done deal. Once the Native American tribes signed onto a piece of the profits, the last stumbling block was the environmental obstructionists and in Canada, they have much less pull than in the USA.

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